Wind leader Denmark hits 33% of its electricity

Date

16 January 2014

LONDON: Denmark was already the world leader in wind power, with wind providing 30% of its electricity in 2012. Now it’s getting an even higher percentage of its juice from big, tall, spinning turbines.

Energinet.dk reports that in 2013, wind generation was 33.2% of the country’s electricity consumption. December was an especially fruitful month for wind in Denmark – as it was in the UK, you might recall. “In December, wind power for the first time reached a level corresponding to more than half of electricity consumption (54.8%),” the Danish energy infrastructure and information company reported.

Denmark increased its wind energy generation – from 10.3 billion kilowatt-hours in 2012 to 11.1 billion kWh in 2013 – despite there being less wind in 2013, December excepted. The country made up for the less gusty conditions with more installed capacity. The 400-megawatt Anholt offshore wind farm in the Kattegat went online, helping boost total installed capacity to 4,792 MW compared to 4,166 MW in 2012.

With its high wind penetration, Denmark is becoming something of a test case, a country being watch by others to see how it pulls it off. It is a big challenge – there have been instances when the fast-spinning turbines were delivering more energy than the country needed, forcing it to unload the power elsewhere at a loss.

In addition to sourcing 50% of its electricity from wind by 2020, Denmark wants to see 35% of its total energy coming from renewables by then. It aims to be powered 100% by renewable sources by 2050.

The US has much more installed capacity than Denmark, at around 60,000 megawatts, but of course that capacity feeds power to a much larger population (315 million vs. 5.6 million). While wind provides about a third of Denmark’s electricity, in the US it provides about one-tenth as much, proprotionately – around 3.5%.